Hi Nino, hope you are well. Ilya Kuznetsov will be dancing Conrad in Le Corsaire, and I guess also von Rothbart in Swan Lake. I will really miss Diana Vishneva however, but I understand her absence is due to her guesting with Vladimir Malakhov in the World Ballet Festival in Tokyo at the same time.

Sofia Gumerova has developed considerably artistically in the past year, and I look forward to seeing her in different roles, as well as Irina Golub and Natalia Solgub.

I make it 206, including the reserve troup. The Bolshoi have 110 names on their website, but I expected more. I believe Perm is also well over 100 strong. I don't know how large the National Ballet of China are. I'm not aware of other companies that are 100+. Later: Except, of course, Paris Opera Ballet with around 150 dancers.

Stuart, no way the National Ballet of China is as large as the Kirov. I have a feeling though without counting that the Bolshoi is slightly larger than the Kirov in size. Nino, I last saw Sofia Gumerova in "Diamonds" last winter, and she was superb.

According to Boris Akimov, AD of the Bolshoi, in a preshow talk before their performance of La Bayadere in Orange County, California last year, the Bolshoi has about 245 dancers, and the total number of people in the company numbers around 3000. What do you do with this many people? Apparently, the company splits in two and performs in different parts of the world.

Thanks for the additional information, everyone. As I mentioned above, The Bolshoi website lists 110 names without any indication of status, so that must be excluding the Corps de Ballet.

Unfortunately, the English part of the National Ballet of China website does not list the dancers. It would be interesting to know how they compare size-wise with the Western companies, taking Kevin's point that they are smaller than the Russian companies.

Well folks, it’s time for Round 1 of the Kirov cast changes, as described on the ROH website. If you scroll up to the casting information in the posting above, I have made the revisions and marked the changes with # and additional information with *.

Having got the mechanics of updating our cast list information out of the way, I've had a chance to think about the impact. Overall, the changes strengthen the programme in my view.

We all have our favourites and not-so-favourites. I enjoyed Yulia Makhalina in "The Dying Swan" in Tallinn recently, but her "Firebird" and "Schéhérazade" did not hit the mark for me. She smiled throughout the former, which did little to give the impression of a mythical bird and there seemed little chemistry with Ruzimatov in "Schéhérazade". I hope that the cancellation of her performances is merely administrative rather than due to injury or other problems.

All my Christmases have come up once - Vishneva substituting in the day I go to see Le Corsaire. Is Makhalina injured/just not coming? And I am not familiar with Tkachenko? and yes, Stuart - I chose the boys. Nice of them to oblige, isn't it?

I am really pleased also to see that Diana Vishneva is now coming though only for one performance. It would have been unthinkable if she had totally missed this season. Actually I've never seen Vishneva dancing Medora in Le Corsaire. I hope to see Andrian Fadeyev and Anton Korsakov as Lankedem.

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